The USA Patriot Act, passed after Sept. 11, 2001, and renewed in March, increased the types of financial information that is reported to the federal government. But if the government reviews your bank account or insurance policy, you probably won't find out about it. A look at what's reported:

•Banks. Hundreds of thousands of transactions that banks and other financial institutions consider "suspicious" are reported to the government each year — without customers' knowledge.

In 2004, financial institutions filed 689,414 "suspicious activity reports" with Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. For the first half of 2005, the most recent period for which data are available, they filed 435,167 reports.

Banks have been required to report suspicious transactions for years, but the Patriot Act expanded their responsibilities, says Richard Riese of the American Bankers Association's Center for Regulatory Compliance. Banks that fail to report transactions that turn out to be illegal face millions of dollars in fines. Riggs Bank was fined $16 million for failing to report suspicious transactions in some foreign accounts, including those of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

"There's a greater sensitivity about reporting unusual activity," Riese says. If a transaction appears questionable, banks "may be erring on the side of filing, rather than giving customers the benefit of the doubt."

When a financial institution reports suspicious activity, it's prohibited by law from telling the customer about the report, Riese says. The law doesn't specify what should trigger a suspicious activity report, Riese says, but an uncharacteristically large deposit by a customer would likely be considered suspicious.

Under Section 314(a) of the Patriot Act, the government can also query financial institutions to see if specific individuals have opened an account or made a transaction recently. The government must then show probable cause to obtain more information about those accounts.

The system has processed 515 requests from 16 federal agencies since November 2002, according to the Treasury Department. The requests have resulted in 90 indictments and 10 convictions.

•Insurance. Insurance companies are regulated by individual states. But under the Patriot Act, they had to create a system to track and report to the government suspicious activity that could be related to money laundering.

What gets reported? Anything the insurer suspects to be related to money laundering through insurance products with cash value or investment features, such as a permanent life insurance policy or an annuity contract.

These products could be used to stash money temporarily, because most states let you get your money back within 10 days if you're not satisfied with the product. So if you buy a life insurance policy and then ask for your money back within those 10 days, you're more likely to be reported to the government.

Insurers all have their own ideas about what's considered a suspicious transaction, says Lisa Tate, senior counsel at the American Council of Life Insurers. But, generally, if someone, say, isn't interested in a death benefit but just wants to know if there's a 10-day free-look feature, that could cause the insurer to report this to the government.

Insurance companies are required to report suspected money-laundering transactions that take place after May 2. But some companies had already been reporting this activity to the government before this, Tate says.